Trump and Harris claims about jobs and labor market

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debated Tuesday. Here is what the candidates said about jobs and what the state of play actually is. 

"Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression,” Harris said. “Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War, and what we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”

The unemployment rate did indeed hit the highest level in modern history early on during the COVID-19 pandemic, topping out at nearly 15%. But when President Joe Biden took over in January 2021, the unemployment rate was already falling. It had dropped under Trump to 6.4% — although that is still millions of jobs short from before.

“But the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs,” Trump said about job creation under Biden. “These were jobs bounce back, and it bounced back and it went to their benefit. But I was the one that created them. They know it, and so does everybody else.”

It is true that the economy has about 15.9 million more jobs than it had in January 2021. In fact, the economy has added jobs every month since about that time.

The context is that when Biden entered office, the economy was still millions of jobs short of where it was prior to the pandemic and the mass shutdown of businesses. The economy was gutted of jobs in the first months of the pandemic, but it began rebounding in May 2020 and started adding them back. The jobs growth came under both Trump and Biden.

Employment rates have not fully recovered. The employment-to-population ratio stood at 60% last month. That is down from the 61.1% level it was at in February 2020, right before the pandemic took hold.

Despite the pandemic, the labor market has objectively been performing well despite the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates at their highest level in years, a feather in the hat for the Biden administration.

Still, while the jobs market has remained robust, there have been signs of slowing in recent months — something that Republicans have begun to hit Harris for by emphasizing that she is part of the Biden administration.

The economy added 142,000 jobs in August, and the pace of job growth has been slowing. The unemployment rate is now 4.2%.

While that is a healthy rate by historical standards, it has increased from recent lows of 3.4%. Job growth was also revised down from previous months.

Additionally, another sign that the labor market is cooling is that job openings plunged in July to their lowest level since January 2021.